


at the end of the world

by wentz



Series: GHOST OF YOU [1]
Category: Bandom, Cobra Starship, Fall Out Boy, My Chemical Romance, Panic! at the Disco
Genre: Alternate Universe - 1940s, Alternate Universe - Historical, Alternate Universe - World War II, M/M, World War II, historical gays heck yes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-16
Updated: 2016-08-16
Packaged: 2018-08-09 01:29:35
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 12,210
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7781611
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wentz/pseuds/wentz
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>he spends a lot of time thinking about gaps... gaps in time, gaps in space. the gap between the hem of mikey’s t-shirt and the waistband of his pants when he stretches his arms over his head. gaps in teeth, gaps in narratives. gaps of silence between gunshots. mostly he thinks about the wide, wide gap of the atlantic ocean and the war waiting on the other side.</p>
            </blockquote>





	at the end of the world

**Author's Note:**

> before you read !! a few trigger warnings:  
> this fic is obviously about WWII so it heavily features aspects of war such as death, violence, etc.  
> at one point i got kind of graphic with describing vomit so tw for emetophobia.  
> also, there's some mention of suicide, although (spoiler) none of the characters actually commit suicide.  
> finally, there is a single use of the fa- slur by a very minor character and some general internalized homophobia. it is set in the 1940s, after all.

****

**THE GHOST OF YOU**

pete’s mother clings to his hand when he leaves. keeps kissing his knuckles, over and over. he smiles and hugs her and kisses his sister’s hair and accepts the stern, approving nod from his father.

and then he leaves for boot camp.

the year is 1941. it’s mid december. pete is 19.

he leaves for boot camp.

 

****

**OUR DAYS WERE NEVER NUMBERED**

he meets patrick on the bus to camp. the guy is tiny, and chubby. pete’s kind of wondering how he passed the physical. when pete introduces himself, patrick scowls and shoves his glasses up the bridge of his nose with his middle finger, mumbling out his own name. pete beams at him and patrick sighs, looking out the window. he lets pete talk his ear off for the rest of the trip without complaining. pete figures that means they’re friends now.

basic training is weird. not really a bad-weird, just weird. fortunately pete is already in great shape physically so it’s not as hard on his body as it is on some of the other poor fuckers (patrick is almost constantly red-faced and gasping for the first few weeks). they’re naked a lot, which strikes pete as sort of strange and unnecessary - but, hey, he wanted to be here - so he strips down and stands in line and tries not to giggle at the thought of all the limp dicks in the room. it isn’t as hard as he thought it would be (no pun intended), at least, not with the sergeant breathing down their necks. early on in training, he makes a joke about it to pat, who flushes a fascinating shade of maroon and says “fuck off, pete” really loudly. it’s the first time patrick makes pete laugh out loud.

the guns make him nervous. they feel wrong in his hands, clunky and unfamiliar, and the grenades never fail to startle him, shaking something deep inside his chest and leaving him breathless. he doesn’t tell anybody about it. he doesn’t want to be teased for eternity for being a fucking pussy.

-

when they graduate basic, they learn that they’re to join the 1st division in florida. camp blanding. to get there, on the double. ten days to cross the country, probably hitchhiking, since they’ve got hardly any money to speak of. pete and patrick stare at one another, lost for words for a few minutes, before breaking into matching grins and hugging the ever-living shit out of one another. pete does most of the hugging, but patrick doesn’t try to stop him, so it’s basically the patrick equivalent of a hug. pete can’t believe his luck.

-

gerard way is an animal of another breed. camp blanding’s very own pushmi-pullyu. pete meets him because pete eats with patrick, and patrick sits at gerard’s table at mealtimes because ray toro sits there and patrick and ray are bunkmates (q, r, s, t, u) and they’ve bonded over guitars or something, and ray sits there because he and gerard are both from jersey so they have some sort of unbreakable jersey blood brother bond. anyways, pete sits next to pat and shovels food into his mouth and listens to gerard ramble about whatever the injustice of the day is while frank iero - another jersey blood brother who’s almost as tiny as patrick - steals the food off gerard’s plate right under his nose. pete’s not sure what to make of some of the stuff gerard says, but it’s entertaining to watch the guy’s hands flail around in increasingly bigger circles like the wings of some giant, bizarre, exotic bird. gerard pauses for breath long enough to look down and pete can’t help but snort at the genuinely puzzled expression on the guy’s face when he sees his empty plate. pete ducks his head to hide his smile and when he looks up, gerard’s little brother is watching him. his face is blasé but there’s something in his eyes behind the flash of his round glasses that makes pete smile wider.

-

without warning pete’s bunkmate (weekes, dallon) gets violently ill and is transferred to a hospital. the bed above pete (wentz, pete) is only empty for four days before a fresh piece of meat shows up (dewees, james) and that night pete stops in front of his bunk to see gerard’s little brother lying on the top mattress, reading a letter. pete stands there for a few seconds, twisting the hem of his shirt in his hands, then clears his throat to get the man’s attention. his eyes flick up and fix on pete over the top of his glasses.

“way comma michael,” he says by way of explanation (u, v, w, x). his voice is kind of nasally, like his brother’s, but deeper.  
pete nods and smiles. his new bunkmate (way, michael) returns to his letter and pete rests his head against the metal frame of the bunk for a second before rolling into bed.

-

a common misconception about mikey way is that he is a man of few words. that’s all that people seem to be able to say when he comes up in conversation.

iero: “mikey? i don’t fuckin’ know, man, ask gerard. he doesn’t talk to me much.”

toro: “i really know frank and gerard better. mikey kind of keeps to himself”

patrick: “what? why are you asking me?”

bryar just shrugs and tells pete that mikey, like himself, doesn’t have time for annoying pricks, and then promptly pushes pete off the end of the bench. (pete thinks bryar is kind of an asshole, even if he is from chicago. patrick likes him though, so pete doesn’t say anything.)

pete doesn’t get it. he decides people just don’t listen well enough, because whenever he’s around mikey he can’t fucking get enough of the shit that comes out of the guy’s mouth. he’s got an opinion (the right opinion, in pete’s… well, opinion) on everything and he’s fucking funny, too. pete’s pretty certain that mikeyway is the most interesting person he’s come upon in his time at camp blanding, maybe in his whole life. he’s right up there with patrick, probably. and even then, mikey’s just got… something. he’s got something that patrick doesn’t have. nothing against patrick, of course; pete fucking adores patrick, but it’s different, somehow. he doesn’t really know why or what it is. but he knows mikeyway is different.

he knows it when he can’t sleep - never sleeps, pete never sleeps, it’s not new, but it’s never not frustrating - and instead of just staring at the inside of his eyelids, he watches the bottom ofmikey’s mattress. the frame of the bunk is so flimsy that pete can feel every move mikey makes. he feels every time mikey turns over under his blanket before falling asleep; he feels the staccato beat of mikey’s fist attempting to punch the military issue pillow into a vaguely comfortable shape; he feels it when mikey jacks off oh-so-quietly, after he thinks everyone is asleep; and he can feel it when mikey dreams. his body twitches, telegraphing to pete through the rickety bunk in a completely different way than it does when he’s awake. pete feels like an eavesdropper in those moments, somehow slimier and more perverted than when he listens to mikey rub one out. in the mornings after pete feels mikey dream, pete sees softness in the air all around him, grainy warm light haloing around his eyes and rumpled bed head. it’s gorgeous. pete thinks he understands why artists depict saints the way that they do.

-

florida is hot and sticky, even in the not-quite-summer, and pete goes shirtless at every opportunity. mikey is more modest. more than once pete catches mikey watching him with one eyebrow quirked ever so slightly in that way that he does that drives pete crazy with wondering what it means. one day pete stops, shirt bundled in his hands, just looking at that little arched eyebrow and grinning like an idiot, waiting for mikey to let him in on the joke. finally he laughs, too loud like always, and shoves mikey a little, pushing at his narrow chest. “shut up!”

mikey’s mouth twitches to the side. “i didn’t say anything.”

pete keeps laughing, because he doesn’t know what else to do. he feels hotter than he did before he took off his shirt. that night he lays on his back with his eyes closed and his hand resting low on his stomach and doesn’t sleep.

-

they get a shiny new name - 1st infantry division, now - and get shipped off to fort benning. everybody’s saying they’re about to be carted overseas. pete hears it from patrick first, who heard it from iero, who heard it from the guy in the bunk next to him (hurley, andy). pat looks mildly anxious when he repeats the news, and pete has to suppress the urge to wrap the little guy up in a bear hug. he settles for slinging an arm around his thin shoulders and smiling so wide that his cheeks hurt. “eh,” pete scoffs. “i’m not worried. we’ll be together wherever they send us.”

patrick heaves a long-suffering sigh and slaps pete’s arm away. “it’d _take_ an ocean between us for you to give me some personal space,” he complains. “maybe when we go i should ask them to leave you behind.”

frank iero’s head pops up from the group playing cards a few feet away and he says loudly, “it’d never work. mikey would notice that his asshole buddy was missing before the ship even left port.” immediately mikey’s brother gerard shoves at the back of iero’s neck, telling him to lay off, but he’s laughing as he does it. everyone’s laughing, even patrick is grinning, so pete laughs, too, but for some reason he feels more like crying.

-

pete turns twenty. none of the guys know it’s his birthday (pete’s half-black, hyper-active, short, and writes poetry; he’s learned a thing or two about picking his battles. he figures he’ll save being ridiculed for something worthier than a few birthday wishes), but he gets a sweet letter from his ma. it hints at a package that pete knows he’s never going to see - probably whatever it was is already well on its way to becoming the sergeant’s next shit - but he can’t bring himself to be too upset. yeah, he’s at fucking camp getting ready to go to fucking war across the atlantic fucking ocean. yeah, he spends his birthday doing drills, practicing not getting his head blown off. yeah, he misses wilmette. that’s just life now. that’s life, being part of 1st. and when pete looks up from his ma’s letter and sees mikey’s socked feet swinging idly in the air as he talks across the aisle of bunks to gerard and iero… pete can’t bring himself to be too upset. he _can_ bring himself to poke mikey’s foot with the point of his pencil through a hole near the heel of his sock. and he can _def_ initely bring himself to cackle when it makes mikey jump so bad that he comes tumbling off the top mattress with a squawked “ _shitdickfuck_ ” and a wild flail of too-long limbs.

-

less than a month later they’re moving again, this time to indiantown gap military reservation. when the officers refer to it they call it “the gap” and pete thinks the nickname suits. there’s no doubt now that they’re being prepped for overseas combat, and this place - “the gap” - floats between home and away, the wings of the theatre of war. he spends a lot of time thinking about gaps in the precious little idle time his brain gets in the month and a half they spend at igmr. gaps in time, gaps in space. the gap between the hem of mikey’s t-shirt and the waistband of his pants when he stretches his arms over his head. gaps in teeth, gaps in narratives. gaps of silence between gunshots. mostly he thinks about the wide, wide gap of the atlantic ocean and the war waiting on the other side.

one day he’s sitting alone, so far in his own head that he doesn’t even notice the footsteps approaching from behind until mikey sits down on the grass next to him. pete feels cloudy-headed as he pulls himself out of his deep train of thought and he knows the smile that he tugs onto his face looks spacey, but mikey doesn’t seem to care. in fact, he barely even looks at pete, just starts pulling blades of grass out of the earth and methodically shredding them with his nails. pete watches him do it for a long time, until mikey gently shoves his foot against pete’s. “you worry too much.”

pete chuckles. “there’s just so fucking much to worry about, mikeyway!” mikey concedes a tiny smile but his eyes are serious when he looks up. pete bumps his shoulder against mikey’s. “i wasn’t worrying, anyways. honestly, i was just thinkin’ about what we’re gonna have for dinner.”

“that’s not true.”

“how do you know, smart ass?”

mikey meets his eyes straight on and pete feels like he’s seeing all the way through pete to the bottom of his soul. “because i know you.” he stares steadily at pete for a few seconds (pete’s aware that this is all so fucking cliche and pete hates cliches, he hates them - but it seems a lot longer than a few seconds; months, maybe, a whole summer of wide brown eyes) before dropping his gaze back to his hands. the late afternoon sun casts mikey into a silhouette framed in gold. he looks unreal. the space between them is live, humming with potential energy. pete wants to reach across it, to stretch out his hand and touch. he is suddenly and inexplicably reminded of the bible story of the woman with the issue of blood.

the sun sinks behind the trees. they go to dinner.

-

__

_“And a certain woman, which had an issue of blood twelve years, and had suffered many things of many physicians, and had spent all she had, and was nothing bettered, but rather grew worse, when she had heard of Jesus, came in the press behind, and touched his garment. For she said, if I may touch but his clothes, I shall be whole._

_And straightaway the fountain of her blood was dried up; and she felt in her body that she was healed of that plague.”_

_MARK 5:25-29_

-

pete has a new obsession. he’s become aware of the space between he and mikey: rarely more than a foot or two, never ever less than six inches. never mentioned, yet somehow agreed upon in some meeting or conversation that pete was absent for, some contract he didn’t read before signing. he dwells on it, like a tongue poking at the emptiness where a tooth ought to be. there should be something in all that nothing. he can feel the buzz of the anonymous belongingness resting just below the frequency of audible sound waves. there’s a time in every day when the sun is slipping into the ground and the dimness of the camp comes not so much from darkness itself as it does from the humid promise of darkness, when the days grow quiet and edge toward night, when the yelling doesn’t stop but seems muted, anyhow, by the sacredness and stillness of the hour. in that time, when mikey draws close to him, pete senses the waves getting long and lazy. heavy. heady. 

within the privacy of his own head, he takes to referring to the space between them as the pete-mikey gap. one day when the sunset is injecting static into his veins he blurts out, “the gap between the east and the west can be measured on half a ruler.” patrick would probably look at pete like antlers had just sprouted from his head, but mikey just raises one eyebrow a little, turning his head to look at him for an elaboration. pete holds his pointer fingers roughly six inches apart in the air in front of his face and stares between them at mikey. he’s not sure if he means it as a challenge or a warning, but he watches anxiously as mikey’s eyes slide from one finger to the other, linger for a moment, and then meet pete’s gaze in the middle. the eyebrow has lowered. pete wants to swallow all the spit that’s filled his mouth, but his throat can’t seem to commit to the action.

the eyebrow is back up, and after a beat the corner of mikey’s lip curls to match it. “i’ve seen your dick, pete. six inches is being generous.” pete drops his hands and shoves mikey’s arm. the latter laughs. his eyes go squinty and teasing behind his glasses.

that night, pete is watching the bottom of mikey’s mattress when he feels him start to dream. suddenly he is hit with waves of relief and gratitude that mikey didn’t catch on to what he was saying, or ignored it, or changed the subject, or maybe all three. he covers his face with his hands and lets out a long, measured breath.

no less than six inches. he’s lucky, really. as far as gaps go. the pete-mikey gap could’ve been six feet deep instead of six inches wide.

-

the first time he jacks off thinking about mikey he sneaks down the rows of bunks to the latrine and stands over the sink grinding the heels of his hands into his eyes in denial of tears. he’s a fucking soldier, for godsake. he doesn’t cry. especially not after getting off.

-

their ship leaves new york at the beginning of august. pete enthusiastically accepts kisses and handkerchiefs from the girls waving on the docks even though he doesn’t know a single one of them from the virgin mary. one tries to give mikey her photo with her address written in pretty cursive on the back. he takes it and the kiss she leaves on his cheek, but after the shouts of well-wishing fade he turns from the porthole to face pete, leaning against the wall on his shoulder with his arms crossed. mikey’s already watching him when pete glances over. something he can’t read, some emotion or expression, dances around mikey’s lowered lashes and the corners of his mouth. “that girl was pretty,” pete says. “i’m jealous.” 

“mmm.” the sound could’ve been transcribed in the dictionary next to noncommittal. mikey’s eyelids remain at half mast as he lifts one hand. the girl’s picture dangles between two fingers like a cigarette. “you want it?” he asks. the syllables stretch long and flat out of his mouth, not mocking, exactly, but closer to it than anything pete’s ever heard from him before. pete stuffs his hands into his pockets, startled and embarrassed and stung. he remembers being a kid and getting bitten by his new dog while trying to show it off to the neighborhood kids. he shakes his head, eyes on the floor to the left of mikey’s shoes. 

mikey shrugs, pushes himself off the wall, and walks away from pete down the corridor in one fluid motion, lazy and loose-hipped. he tosses the photo through an open porthole without breaking stride. shame burns pete’s ears. he wishes he was thinner so that he could throw himself out in a similar fashion.

-

he hates being at sea. migraines bore behind pete’s temples, accentuated by the glare of the sun on the waves. he wants to roll himself up inside of one of mikey’s cigarettes and slowly burn to death from head to toe, a little faster every time mikey’s lips purse around the end and pull oxygen through the filter. 

“do you have a sweetheart? back home?”

it’s not a question they’ve asked one another before. pete closes his eyes. his head throbs. “no. no sweetheart.” it’s not entirely true; he’d been dating a girl before he left, a pretty girl with baby blue eyes. they’d traded one or two letters since he left wilmette but after arriving at camp blanding pete stopped finding time to write back.

mikey’s voice has the ring of someone sharing a funny secret when he says, “me neither.”

pete looks up in time to see mikey’s eyes flutter shut as he tips his head back and blows a thin line of smoke into the air.

-

england is more training, just in a different time zone with different surroundings. the sunsets lose their beauty as the season wanes into late october. 1st boards a ship for africa. the officers refer to it as operation torch. an unofficial game springs up amongst the ranks of who can invent the best nickname for it. iero does his damndest to coax him into it, but pete never thinks of any good enough to share; since leaving america his mind floats from one thing to another in a restless, avoidant wander. pete can’t make it tarry long enough on any one thought to find solid footing before it drifts away again.

hours after they’ve gone to bed on the night before the ship is set to arrive in algeria, mikey’s voice whispers in the dark next to pete’s bunk. maybe because he’s taken off guard, pete makes room without fuss when mikey moves to slip in next to him. he blames the miniscule bunk for how the line of mikey’s chest presses against his side. the pete-mikey gap suddenly seems much safer in comparison. pete’s entire body winds tight with tension. “wh-...?” pete half-mumbles, faltering. mikey doesn’t respond. the longer they lay without speaking, the harder pete’s heart pounds against his sternum.

“are you scared?” for a moment pete thinks mikey means right that instant and he almost breathes an incriminating _terrified. you terrify me, mikeyway_ before mikey adds, “they keep saying to just ‘remember your training’, but it’s not... it can’t be the same.” the click-grind of mikey nibbling on his own thumbnail reaches pete’s ears. “i remember learning about africa in school. egyptians and whatever-the-hell. i guess there’s probably not gonna be any lions and pyramids and shit where we’ll be.” a single huff of silent laughter puffs against pete’s jaw. 

pete feels nauseous and dizzy, his original reply dying on the tip of his tongue. the back of his mouth tastes sour. he clears his throat with a few swallows, each one sounding louder than the last in the quiet room. “no, probably-- probably no lions.” he pauses, considering. “maybe a few snakes.”

mikey hums softly in the back of his throat. “saporta will be happy.” pete counts the time passing in silence to distract himself from the heat radiating through mikey’s shirt. the latter shifts in the small space, rolling his weight from the back of his thigh to his shoulder, and his stomach brushes against pete’s hip for a fraction of a second. pete’s blood freezes and then flashes white-hot so rapidly that his vision goes spotty at the edges. he longs miserably for the wall of the bunk to give way and let him roll away from mikey into the sea.

“to answer your question,” he sighs, starting his count over. “shitless.”

 

****

**

MY HEART IS A GRENADE, YOU PULL THE PIN

**

north africa is fucking insane. people - people they _know_ , their acquaintances and fellow soldiers - die. like, they actually _die_ , and it sounds stupid and inane when pete attempts to explain it to the others but no one makes fun of him; either they kind of get it anyways or they’re just too tired (entirely likely). gunfire rattles around pete constantly; he forces his eyes to stay open and clings to life like a tick on a hound. 

there’s not a lot of time to look at the smoke-choked sky except to check for enemy planes and bombs, but when mikey bumps his knuckles against pete’s spine and whispers “look at the stars”, pete twists his chin up obediently.

-

the sound of bullets zinging over their heads becomes little more than background noise, like birdsong or passing automobiles might’ve been back home. pete leans against the shoulder of whoever’s closest - patrick, hurley, saporta, whoever will sit there and let him - and bemoans the lack of cigarettes (even though he doesn’t even smoke, never has) to distract them while he discreetly chases the edges of their sleeves and collars with his fingertips, searching for a sliver of skin to ground himself with. at night he listens to the anti-stillness of the air and wonders if any of them are still alive at all or if everyone in 1st is just stuck in limbo together waiting for an overworked god to sign off on their eternal paperwork. it’s been so long since pete felt another person’s pulse that he doubts the answer mikey whispers back to him in the pressing dark. the prisoners they take (thousands of them, he hears the other guys murmur, thousands of germans and italians and vichy-french. he’s not sure of the accuracy of the number but it echoes in the strategically blank spots of his mind during combat) all look like normal guys to pete so long as they’re not talking, babbling to one another in their native tongues.

“the thing about running into a smokescreen,” dewees muses, hazy in the half light of the dugout. “is it always works both ways.”

-

the first time pete kills someone, mikey, despite being visibly exhausted, sits up with him and listens to pete wax poetic about life and the fragility of peace and how everyone is just doing the best they can in the absence of the hands-on gods of old. mikey sits and listens and when pete’s monologue stutters to an anticlimactic stop, he reaches across the empty six inches to straighten pete’s collar and his fingertips touch pete’s neck, collarbone, chest, chin for a little longer than strictly necessary as he does it. somehow it makes pete feel understood and comforted.

he doesn’t know the first time mikey takes a life. he knows it happens because he sees mikey shoot at least a dozen enemy soldiers without batting an eye while they’re together in the field, but mikey never discloses the details of the event, how it happened or how it made him feel, at least not to pete. fair enough, but pete catches himself wishing that he knew mikey half as well as mikey seems to know him.

-

in tunis a stray dog attaches itself to iero (or maybe the other way around). at first it just totters around following his shadow, but at some point or another he picks it up and starts carrying it tucked in the crook of his elbow like a kitten. it’s ugly as all fuck, a tiny rat-sized thing with matted, patchy fur and misty bug-eyes. its tongue hangs out the side of its mouth where its teeth are missing and the scraggly hairs on its chin are green from being sucked on. it’s fucking revolting. iero calls it sweet pea. gerard snorts water up his nose mid-swallow when pete suggests that it looks more like a sweat pee.

some of the boys from 1st division march in the parade through the city. strange faces slide past pete, features running together like watercolors. the bands clang in brassy bravado. iero’s jacket has a suspicious sweet-pea-sized bulge in front. a little girl runs to toro on the end of the row to bashfully but earnestly press a flower into his hand. the whole experience has a surreal tinge to it after the battle only a week or so prior; ruts from tank tracks still scar the road in spots, and just a few days earlier the official casualty report finally trickled through the ranks, putting rumors to rest for better or worse.

“it’s nice,” he says to patrick afterwards, sitting on the steps outside the temporary barracks. “it was nice. i guess. because of what it stood for, you know, a victory, one step closer to defeating the nazis or whatever. but… dunno, something about it felt wrong.” 

patrick nods, twirling a twig between his fingers absently. the dying sunlight slants sideways down the street, casting pat’s shadow into pete’s lap. “like it was a little false.”

he tests that out, finds it lacking. “not false, exactly. just like i was an extra in a reel.”

across the way, iero talks animatedly to gerard against the wall of an abandoned two-story. his cigarette trails smoke in loops as he moves his hands in circles. pete tries to read his lips, but iero’s mouth forms the words fast and slurred in the same manner that all the other jersey guys speak. midway through one of iero’s gestures, gerard’s hand darts out and plucks the cigarette from his fingers but iero doesn’t miss a beat, hands continuing their circuit uninterrupted. when gerard takes a drag the cherry casts a red glow on both of their faces, warm and close in the shadow of the building.

pete finds mikey smoking a cigarette of his own on the other side of the barracks, iero’s dog lying in the dirt at his feet. he imagines mimicking the scene between gerard and iero, stealing the smoke while mikey leans close to tell him something no one else can hear, but settles for shoving his fists into his pockets and watching iero’s scrawny mutt nibble at its own fleas while mikey finishes his cigarette in silence.

-

sicily is beautiful in the summer. the fighting is close to constant and alternates between exchanging rounds with enemy soldiers and hunkering down as shells rain down on them. pete gets into the habit of snagging patrick or mikey when they get the warning to hide away. the bombs shake pete up. he likes to have someone familiar within arm’s length. he’s not afraid, exactly, except maybe in that hidden, instinctive way that makes all creatures flinch in the face of fire and brimstone and death from above, makes them reach for the things that are important to them. 

he starts to think that nothing shakes mikey at all. even when they’re trapped in a cramped foxhole getting the shit bombed out of them, the guy just blinks away the grit that falls into his face and asks if pete has any food on him.

there’s almost always a lull in combat during the day, typically a few hours after noon when the sun is high and hot and there are no tactical advantages desperately needing to be exploited. the men take to stealing naps or eating in shifts during these lazy hours. pete always lets mikey take first snooze. mikey sleeps with his head pillowed on a sandbag next to pete’s thigh while pete diligently sits guard (occasionally he notices mikey twitching in his sleep; dreaming, even on the battlefield. for whatever reason he feels the need to be twice as vigilant when mikey dreams, like he’s guarding the dreams as well as the man) and after awhile they swap and pete struggles to catch a few minutes of rest while mikey watches, humming songs pete never knows the names of under his breath. the summer seems particularly potent during these quiet spells.

usually pete uses the downtime to close his eyes and dial back the tension in his muscles a few notches, reset his thoughts so he can go back into combat with a clearer head, but sometimes when he’s really exhausted he actually halfway falls asleep, consciousness and unconsciousness bleeding together into a messy puddle of fragmented thoughts. he slides in and out of dreams that his head tells him belong to mikey: they’re walking a bulldog in a park while pete recites lines of poetry that don’t belong together; they’re standing in kingsley lake with water up to their naked waists and pete can’t see mikey’s eyes past the flash of his glasses; pete is stuck to the ceiling over mikey’s bunk in the camp blanding barracks and he watches as mikey touches himself and crumples into a paper doll with the sound of an entire congregation turning in their bibles to john, chapter eleven, verse thirty-five; a crazy orange sun sets over them as they run laps around a spinning vinyl record. when pete wakes up he feels dirty and indulgent, less like a guard dog ( _"a little dog who wags his tail / and knows no other joy / of such a little dog am i / reminded by a boy"_ ) and more like a dragon ( _"beware the jabberwock, my son! / the jaws that bite, the claws that catch!"_ ).

-

troina is by far the worst combat pete’s seen thus far. the terrain is hell, all rocky hills and mountains and shit, and the germans cut off their supply line so there’s almost no food. casualties cripple the regiments. he hears on the grapevine that one regiment only has something like thirteen able-bodied men left. hurley remains positive. “we’ll win,” he says, shrugging. “we have to win. i’ve got a betting pool going. gerard’s drawing me new ink.” at the sound of his name gerard glances over his shoulder and nods enthusiastically, tiny teeth unnaturally white in his dirt-caked face.

“i’m thinking a big ass bee,” he speculates aloud. “what do you think, mikes?”

the lack of food gives them an edge at first, but eventually it disintegrates into a dangerous liability. men become less steady on their feet and careless as hunger dulls their reaction times. pete’s no exception. he hears the planes the same time everybody else does, trails mikey towards the hidey hole they’ve been sharing, but halfway there he realises he left his pack behind and has to turn around. mikey’s hand catches his, grip so tight it’s close to painful, and yanks him backwards. “foxhole’s this way.” 

pete wriggles his hand free. “left my pack. go ahead, i can make it.”

mikey looks doubtful but lets him go. pete retrieves his pack. he makes it all the way back to mikey before the bombers are overhead, but it’s a close thing. he half-trips half-skids into the shallow foxhole just as the reverb of the first shell blowing reaches their ears. 

“asshole,” mikey bites out, punching him in the arm. “you fucking cocksucker, if you ever do that again i’ll string you up on a tank turret by your goddamn balls. so fucking careless, _jesus,_ pete, and i just had to sit here and wait--” he scowls and jabs pete with his knuckles a few more times. pete winces sheepishly. mikey backs off as far as he can (which isn’t far at all, since the foxhole is barely big enough for both of them, let alone both of them plus room to move around in) and lets go of a lungful of air. when he speaks again, it’s quieter. “oughta nail you up on the wall just to keep you out of trouble… _christ.”_

for a moment pete’s breathing - still labored from sprinting across the rocks - is deafening in the small space. he wouldn’t have said what he does if he hadn’t been stupid with hunger. “worried the germans would mess up my pretty face, mikeyway?”

mikey is kind of a skinny fucker but he has a mean right hook.

-

“england, patty. we’re back!” pete declares, hanging off patrick’s neck by one arm, throwing the other one wide in an all-encompassing gesture. “what kind of trouble should we get into, baby? couple of roguish american heartthrobs like you ‘n me… the world is our fucking oyster, y’know!”

people can say what they like about patrick’s size but there’s no denying he’s got some lethal elbows. pete spies the murderous glint in his friend’s eye a fraction too late to dodge the one pat jabs mercilessly into pete’s ribcage. he yelps and has enough sense to jump out of range before flashing pat his best wounded look.

patrick tugs at the bottom of his coat and refuses to notice. “let’s start by agreeing that you won’t ever call me a roguish american heartthrob ever again. _hon_ estly…”

a pair of blonde chicks catch pete’s eye as they walk past headed in the opposite direction. he tips his hat to them in an exaggerated bow, winks, grins when they look at each other and giggle behind their hands. he pivots to watch them leave, still half-bent and walking backwards in patrick’s wake. “have a lovely day, ladies,” he calls after them.

distracted with sending coy looks back at pete over their shoulders, the girls stumble straight into the middle of gerard and his boys. the one in blue ricochets off toro’s big shoulders straight into mikey’s chest. his hands reflexively float to her waist to steady her, and she latches onto his biceps for balance. pete’s brain contracts into a tight fist and he whirls around, grabbing patrick’s elbow and hauling him down the street at a renewed pace, answering patrick’s irritated “what the hell” with a braying laugh and a loud “england, patty!”

-

pete pokes his nose over the edge of bunk over his and waggles his eyebrows up and down several times. “deja vu, mikeyway. fate hath brought us together again.”

mikey lowers his letter an inch to look down at pete. someone romantic would probably say his eyes are dancing, but pete’s willing to blame it on the glare in his glasses. “thy blest return seems distant to mine eyes as that red sun fast sinking ‘neath the verge,” he replies flatly, returning to his letter with the barest hint of a smirk around his lips.

“what?”

“desmond.” he pushes his spectacles up with the side of his finger, impossibly smug. “by caulfield.”

“you’re impossibly smug,” pete informs him, but makes a mental note to find a library on his next day off. about a week after the original incident, he walks past mikey reclined on gerard’s bunk and tosses the book of poetry onto the mattress next to him. mikey jumps, magazine crumpling as his hands clench into fists on instinct. 

pete ducks his head under the top bunk, puts his face close to mikey’s (not too close, though; he minds the six inch gap) to bat his eyelashes girlishly and quote in a breathy, besotted voice, “look on me, dearest, with those sunbeam eyes; on every thrilling glance each bright thought flies.” leaning back, he bares his teeth in a grin. mikey blinks at him, expression unreadable. “desmond, right?” pete snickers (he totally won this one, fuck mikeyway and his hoity-toity literature, like pete isn’t well read. pete’s well read, just not in obscure as fuck 19th century british poetry about the plague) and retreats to his own bed across the aisle. stars explode in front of his eyes when the hardback book flies through the air and lands solidly on his balls. 

the same night he lies in the dark and feels mikey toss and turn in the bed above him. pete whispers “wild and uncontrolled the strong emotions of a heart like mine; yet thou canst sway me with a word of thine” into the still air between their bunks. mikey sighs softly. pete’s skin prickles.

a few days later, he finds a piece of paper wedged into the bed frame over his pillow with words scrawled across it in spiky letters. _why hath fate made me thus weak?_

it’s just joking around, just banter, but his stomach churns.

-

rehearsals. that’s what they call the drills they do in preparation for the invasion. it strikes pete as kind of funny. like they’re ballerinas getting ready for the big recital. it gives the phrase ‘the theatre of war’ a whole new hilarious meaning. he’s not unaware of the seven shades of irony surrounding the whole thing. if being a soldier has taught him anything, it’s a healthy appreciation of the ironic.

he stops writing letters back to wilmette because he’s not sure they’re even getting there anymore. there’s nothing he can really report, anyways; the higher-ups keep the troops in the dark as much as possible to avoid leaks and pete doesn’t feel the need to share what little information that they are privy to. besides, his mother probably doesn’t want to hear him whinge about how cold the ocean is regardless of how much she claims to miss him. this is what he tells himself when he reads her letters and can’t manage to feel homesick.

at some point pete checks the waves that fill the empty space between he and mikey to discover that they have transformed from tendrils of spiderweb into something closer resembling harpstrings. he plucks at them, testing the connection, and the vibrations are mellow and sweet. mikey looks up from his spot near the radio on the other side of the rec hall and the warmth in his gaze when he meets pete’s eyes inversely sends a shiver down pete’s spine.

-

one weekend saporta invites pete and patrick down to the pub for a few drinks, but as soon as they step outside he remembers something he forgot and runs back into the barracks to retrieve it. pete and patrick huddle inside their jackets while they wait. pete notices mikey sitting across the yard, nose buried in a book. a stray cat has made itself at home next to him; mikey rubs behind its ears with one hand as he reads.

“it’s been a long summer,” pete muses.

patrick stares at him in disbelief. “it’s january, pete. i’m wearing three coats.”

“yeah, but it still feels like summer, y’know? not the weather, but...” pete purses his lips, searching for the right words. the little cat butts its head against mikey’s hand when he stops petting to turn a page. mikey obligingly goes back to scratching and uses his nose to turn it instead. “everything else.”

-

a thin layer of cigarette butts layers the packed dirt on the west side of the mess hall, marking gerard and iero’s latest hiding spot. it’s a good place, close enough to the fence that there’s no foot traffic but still within earshot of the hustle and bustle so it’s easy to come and go without being too obvious, and when the sun is setting it’s almost warm against the clapboard wall. in a military camp where privacy is precious contraband, it’s a fucking goldmine. mikey moves into pete’s space, hesitating at the very edge of six inches. he smokes something different from iero and gerard subscribes to no brand, just smokes whatever he can bum off someone else, so the stale scent of iero’s dead cigarettes twines with that of the fresh one burning between mikey’s loose lips. it’s sort of gross and pete’s slightly queasy, but he understands needing a hit. sympathises, even, as one hand wanders through no-man’s land to touch mikey’s hip, feather-light, nervous.

behind the glasses and the smoke, mikey’s eyes slide shut. pete isn’t close enough to count the eyelashes fanned across his cheek.

-

pete gets his ass reamed by his sergeant for being a pussy after an exercise. pete deserves it, he’s not denying that. he got cocky and lazy and fumbled an easy maneuver and he knows that time is precious. he should’ve known better, so he stands there and takes the tongue-lashing and accompanying punishment. when sergeant armstrong accuses him of being a faggot, pete’s ears roar. upon returning to camp, he ducks between two parked trucks and grinds the heels of his hands into his eye sockets until he sees sunbursts. mikey finds him (did he follow the wavering lines like ariadne’s thread?) but pete pushes him away hard with both hands (too hard, too hard - mikey stumbles and his back hits the broadside of one of the trucks sharply, driving a soft gasp from his chest).

-

“i turned seventeen today,” patrick tells pete one night. they’re standing side by side, backs against the cold wall of the transport, cradling their guns like teddy bears. it’s just an exercise, but if an officer catches them lollygagging they’ll still be thoroughly chewed out. pat’s voice is low and hoarse. he doesn’t take his eyes off the night sky as he speaks. pete rolls his head to the side and watches his friend’s face for a few moments. it’s not hard to do the math in his head.

“fuck. ‘trick.”

pat snorts. “yeah.”

they’re quiet for awhile longer. through the dark pete can see the red point of iero’s cigarette on the opposite end of the boat. he stands close to gerard, their heads bent together; a familiar sight in an alien setting, or maybe the alienness of the setting has become part of what makes the sight familiar.

“happy birthday, man.”

the metal pieces of patrick’s uniform clink softly as he shifts, frowning down at the rifle in his hands. he bobs his head in a miniscule nod of acknowledgement, lips pressed into a tight line. his brow is furrowed so deep that pete thinks there’ll probably be a new wrinkle when it goes back. if it ever goes back.

the next day 308 soldiers die in friendly fire storming the beach for the exercise, not counting the 700-odd killed by german e-boats. the boys from 1st sit together in silence afterwards. iero pulls out a pack of cards and starts a game of poker to take the weight off the silence, maybe, or maybe just because he can’t stand sitting still any longer. pete sneaks looks at mikey from the corner of his eyes and makes reckless bets on shitty hands.

-

there’s a uso party. it’s obviously a last-fucking-hurrah for the troops about to stick their necks out in normandy, but pete’s not keen on looking a gift horse in the mouth. there’s a bar and an overabundance of pretty girls to bat their eyelashes at anyone in a uniform. pete watches mikey flirt with a dame wearing gorgeous pink lips and a deep blue dress, then saporta demands his attention at the bar (everything about saporta demands attention, somehow. pete oscillates between loving the magnetism and hating the competition). he loses track of mikey until one of the uso ladies comes onstage to announce a surprise treat - and the jersey boys plus bryar shamble onstage wearing shit-eating _gotcha_ smirks. iero and toro hold electric guitars, mikey’s got an electric bass. bryar squeezes behind the drumset. a vague urge to push through the crowd and stand directly in front of the stage forms in pete’s brain and he halfway gets off his stool before thinking twice about it and sitting back down. his grip tightens around his drink as gerard checks the microphone and clears his throat before launching into their song. pete hangs onto every note, follows mikey’s fingers up and down the neck of the bass, watches his body arch in a parenthetical curve and rock with the beat. mikey plays like he exists, understated but steady and skillful. essential in that if he stopped, everything else would be obligated to stop as well. the music makes a round shape in pete’s chest, curls inside of him and presses outwards. he wishes he could play bass. he wishes for mikey’s hands cupping his face.

the same girl who’d been with mikey earlier approaches him, smiling shyly, and asks for a dance. pete can’t think of any reason to tell her no. he finishes his drink and leads her onto the floor. his wrist trembles minutely from the strain of holding onto his glass as though it would be able to keep him from falling any harder than he already had. 

she’s a good dancer, light and sweet. after a minute or so of coy small talk, the girl rests her head against pete’s shoulder and he allows his gaze to drift back to the stage. mikey catches his eye and his lips curl into a tiny, soft smile before he glances back down at his bass. 

when the song ends and pete draws away from his partner, she looks up at him with round, sad eyes as if he’s already dead.

mikey and the others play a few more songs before a local band replaces them and starts up a string of jazzier tunes. pete catches the jersey boys carousing at the bar along with a few other assholes from their battalion. he dodges iero’s flying elbows to sidle up next to mikey, squeezes his bicep gently. mikey turns from observing as hoppus and dewees chug pints with their elbows linked together and smiles at pete as though he’s surprised to see him there. his breath smells like a cocktail.

“didn’t tell me you were a musician,” pete murmurs.

mikey grins wider. “you didn’t ask,” he retorts, watching pete from the corner of his eyes as he licks the rim of his glass before taking another drink. pete blinks at him, for once lost for words. mikey’s pupils are massive in the dim lights. 

a shout goes up around the partiers crowded near them as a glass tips over, soaking pete’s jacket sleeve and half the bar. the moment expires. pete looks away to give iero the appropriate amount of good-natured shit (the guy is pretty trashed - he keeps giggling and swaying sideways to shove at gerard’s chest with his shoulder) and when he glances back at mikey, he’s busy laughing and letting saporta whisper in his ear. pete picks up one of the dozens of half-empty glasses on the bar and clinks it against gerard’s on impulse. “to the u.s. of fucking a,” he declares when gerard and iero raise their eyebrows at him expectantly, and they both snort but still toss back the remainder of their drinks along with him.

pete stays at the bar for a while, mooching drinks off of people he knows (mostly iero, who keeps forgetting that he’s already bought pete several in apology for messing up his uniform) until he overhears gerard talking to mikey. “c’mon, mikey, it’ll be alright. really, i mean it. you’re mikey fuckin’ way, of course it’ll be alright. i dare those shit-eating nazis to fuck with mikey fuckin’ way.”

pete steps outside for some air.

-

mikey’s body shakes over him. his hands tremble as well, fumbling to grip the front of pete’s jacket, and his breath puffs across pete’s face in irregular gusts as though he might be about to cry. pete might be about to cry, too. his ears ring but somehow he still registers the faint strain of music from the party coming through the wall, tries to pick out the tune with the half of his brain doing its damnedest to be absent from what’s happening.

“pete,” mikey breathes. it comes out as a whimper and pete sucks air in through his teeth so fast that it whistles. he pushes down against mikey’s leg and the feeling makes him dizzy. “pete, pete, pete. oh my god, pete.” the way mikey says his name reminds pete of the way you tell a secret, the kind of secret that you don’t want to keep because telling it is way too fucking thrilling, and pete wants to try that, too, wants to see if it tastes as intoxicating as it sounds.

he swallows thickly. his mouth is too wet and too dry all at once. “m--” his lungs squeeze as mikey shoves his thigh forwards. pete’s name drops from mikey’s mouth again as he does it; his voice is fucking wrecked and goes straight to pete’s head (and straight to pete’s head). “fu… fuck.” one of mikey’s hands releases its vice grip on pete’s jacket and trails up pete’s chest to cling tightly to the back of his neck, keeping their heads close. it’s good, because for every part of pete that wants mikey more than anything in the world there’s another part to match that desperately wants to run away screaming. now he has no choice. he has to stay here, pinned against this brick wall, has to shake through it. has to commit. mikey’s mouth hangs open slightly and his lips are red and wet with spit and holy fucking shit, they’re doing this. they’re actually doing this, he’s actually doing this, rutting against his best friend’s leg in a dark alley like a horny golden retriever, getting off on listening to mikey’s tongue drip sin in the form of his name.

his chest feels too small for his lungs. “mi… jesus, fuck.” he shakes his head and their foreheads roll against one another. “mikey.” it sounds significant as he chokes it out on a roll of mikey’s hips. heaven. hell. a curse. a prayer. “mikey.” sounds like a love song. happily ever after below the waist.

sounds like the end of the world.

-

the wind is fucking vicious. pete can hear the crew yelling at one another over the sound of the ocean doing its best to pull them under. he gets the impression that they’ve been blown off course. he doesn’t understand how you can get blown off course in a ship that doesn’t have any sails. 

there’s not much to see from where he’s at. mostly just a bunch of guys from the fighting one trying not to puke on one another’s equipment and a vague impression of grey sky and black sea. not that he’s complaining. he’s never really been the kind of guy who wants to get the bad news in advance.

his fingers flex on his plastic-wrapped gun. he wonders what mikey is thinking. they’re on different boats. different landing craft. the gap between them yawns, the invisible threads that hold them together shuddering. pete feels the anxiety of separation unspooling rapidly under every cell of his skin. if he could just touch mikey. fuck. if he could just _see_ him.

one of the 101st guys he’d met at some uso dance in england had clanked his pint against pete’s and said that a soldier’s last thoughts should be of home, so he was “gonna be thinkin’ _real fuckin’ hard_ about antarctica” during the invasion. everyone at the bar had laughed. hell, even pete had laughed at the time. it was fucking funny, he was warm and safe and a little drunk and someone nearby was smoking mikey’s brand, the smell of which pete had been trying to breathe all the way into the bottom of his lungs as subtly as possible. anything is funny when it doesn’t have to be. now the pilot’s words break into pete’s memory of mikey’s hands on his belt clumsily in the dark and he wonders if he is thinking his last thoughts. his stomach drops. it’s not from seasickness.

pete looks over at patrick and says, “yesterday was my birthday. i just remembered.”

patrick opens his eyes at the sound of pete’s voice, but keeps them forward, unfocused. “how…?” he doesn’t get out more than that before clamping his mouth shut around a dry heave. pete gets it anyways.

“twenty two.” he pauses. “hey patrick, once we get home i’m taking you to meet my ma. she’s the best, pat. and my sister, too, she’s a firecracker. she takes care of me, y’know, always has, we got the whole older-younger thing backwards, i guess.” he lets his head tip back, looks up at the sky. “i… _fuck_ , patrick, he…i don’t...” his chest is tight, heart puckered closed. if he says it out loud, if he says it right now, he can never take it back. someone will know, and even though that someone would be patrick and pete trusts patrick with everything, he can't bring himself to say it because what he feels for mikey - this hot-heavy-fragile diamond shaped secret at his core - is dangerous and wrong. if he tells, any and all plausible deniability goes overboard. patrick will know. he’ll never be able to un-know.

a soldier’s last thoughts should be of home. 

“pat.” his lungs squeeze around the word. patrick’s hand is clammy when it slides into pete’s, fingers shaky and weak but there. present. something to hold onto that isn’t a gun or himself.

pete clings to it.

-

pete’s never cried during combat. it’s not something you have time for, it’s not something your body lets you do. afterwards, sure, after the adrenaline wears off and your brain has finally processed that you’re no longer in immediate mortal peril. even then, though. pete’s not an easy crier, not since his parents had him straightened out back in his teenage years.

so when he sees the skinny grey-green shape he’s been keeping tabs on in the back of his mind go down in the corner of his eye, when he risks a longer look and sees the dark black spot blooming across mikey’s chest, he doesn’t do anything, really. he sees, he turns back to the germans he was shooting at, and that’s it. for three more days, that’s it. that’s all he can afford.

-

_“Two kinds of people are staying on this beach: the dead and those who are going to die!”_

_Colonel George Taylor, 16th Infantry Regiment, 1st Infantry Division  
June 6, 1944_

-

on d+3, d-day operations are complete for omaha beach. pete sits down. he reaches outwards, feeling around for that gap, that nothingness that ties him to mikey. and then iero is there.

“wentz. wentz,” he says. his voice is hoarse. he looks tired, more tired than pete’s ever seen him. pete only realises that he’s actually put his hand out when iero grabs it, notches their thumbs together and grips. pete’s fingers automatically wrap around the inside edge of iero’s hand. he’s thrown by how soft the skin is. he wonders what’s so important about halloween that iero had to get it inked on his knuckles. as if pete is qualified to judge what makes a good tattoo. 

“wentz.” iero’s voice breaks. his eyes are big and tired and grieved and old, way too old. frank’s other hand comes up and cups the outside of pete’s hand. the touch is strangely gentle, almost intimate. iero looks like some perverse version of a priest, kneeling in the mud in front of pete in his battered uniform, rifle still slung over his shoulder, the silver chain of his crucifix barely visible beneath his collar. a misplaced revulsion rises in pete’s throat like bile; he does not want anything to do with any god whose priests look like this. he fights the impulse to wrench himself out of iero’s grasp. pity shades frank’s face. pete guesses that his hand has started to shake where it’s trapped between iero’s palms. a quick press of both hands, and then iero lets go. “mikey’s dead.”

pete nods, wipes his hand on his pants, his coat, his shirt. dread starts to climb up the ligaments of his spine one by one. for the past three days iero has probably had to be incredibly strong. impossibly strong. strong enough for gerard, who lost his brother, strong enough for ray, who couldn’t save his friend, strong enough for his own grief, and strong enough for seventy two hours of combat, all at once. that must be why his voice hardly even wobbles when he grips pete’s knee too tight and says, “ray did everything he could, but, uh. y’know.” frank shakes his head and the unfastened chinstrap of his helmet swings. “um… yeah. i thought you should hear it out loud from one of us first.” he gets up, turns to leave, hesitates. “ray says…uh, ray told me he probably didn’t suffer much. ‘cause of the shock. and he died so fast after… he says he didn’t.” he bites one of his nails, spits out the grime. “gee - i mean, gerard, y’know... he could use someone who knows mikey. is close to him, y’know. er, was. we, uh…” frank stops. his eyebrows draw together. “didn’t really know him like you do. did.”

“you’ve known him longer than i have.”

iero sighs. “yeah, well. we _know_ him, but we don’t… didn’t... you ‘n mikey… it’s a different kind of knowing.” he meets pete’s eyes again. there’s a hint of pleading in them. _don’t make me say it out loud._

the last thing that pete wants is to hear _iero_ say it out loud, for _iero_ to be the one who speaks it into existence when pete himself doesn’t have the stones to do it, even now when it doesn’t matter anymore. he nods vaguely and frank leaves. 

pete finds the pete-mikey gap inside of his own chest.

 

****

  
**THE ONLY THING I HAVEN’T DONE YET IS DIE (AND IT’S ME AND MY PLUS ONE AT THE AFTERLIFE)**

there’s too much to worry about, really, to stop for long. pete’s never been more grateful for the breakneck pace of the front line of a major operation. he stays busy. doing menial, repetitive tasks allows the jangling, painful cacophony in his head to glaze over like a cauterised wound. his grandmother’s voice echoes in the whited-out space of his brain: _the devil makes work for idle hands._

he’s fine. he’s doing fine.

in the middle of the haze patrick’s hand catches pete’s bicep and stops him in his tracks, tugging him around to reel pete in close to pat’s chest, and without any sort of preamble pete breaks. he sags against patrick, bunches the back of pat’s shirt in both fists and holds on, nose pressed so tight to patrick’s shoulder that he can hardly breathe (if he can’t breathe, he can’t cry). trick stays silent but his arms are blessedly, mercifully tangible around pete’s neck.

-

they never really kissed. they never kissed (pete doesn’t count messy, wet lips dragging artlessly down the line of his neck, coming to rest with the hard edge of teeth at the curve of his trapezius) and they rarely touched (pete doesn’t count hands over mouths, muscles shaking, stars swirling in the reflective edges of mikey’s specs). all of pete’s memories of mikey’s body are filtered through uniforms and rules and lines that just shouldn’t be (couldn’t be) crossed, boiled down to foggy shapes that coil and uncoil behind his eyelids when his hand is down his shorts. he cried the first time he got off thinking about mikey and he cries the last time, too, biting down on his pillow and choking on the taste of cotton and mikey’s name, stuck somewhere between the back of his tongue and the bottom of his aching heart.

he’s on his knees on the hard floor in front of the toilet when gerard puts a hand on his shoulder, pulling at him, trying to get him to stand up. “pete. pete, come on.” pete sobs and it’s so forceful that it makes him gag; he has to lean over the bowl for a moment to throw up. it’s mostly stomach acid; his throat burns and his nose runs and pete can’t remember feeling more pathetic than he does as he watches his spit and his snot dribble into the toilet bowl in sync. eventually gerard gives up on trying to get pete to his feet and sits down with his back against the wall, legs stretched out in front of him. they’re not as long as mikey’s were. gerard sighs and it’s shallow but old. ancient. sisyphean. “i want a fucking drink,” he mutters.

pete wipes the spittle away from his mouth with the back of his hand and stares at a chip in one of the floor tiles. he can’t stop sniffling and hiccuping like a little kid.

“war is hell,” gerard says. the words ring hollow off the tile. “they tell you war is hell, and you don’t believe them. and then you come overseas and you think you get it, but you don’t, you never really do, because you’re still alive and that makes you invulnerable by default. and even if you do die, who cares? because that’s it. you die and it’s over and it doesn’t matter to you anymore because you’re dead.” he pauses to swallow and it’s impossibly loud. “but then your fucking brother dies. or your best friend. or your soulmate.” pete chokes on another sob and gerard’s eyes flick up to rest on him for a moment. they’re small, sharp, hazel - mikey’s were wide, soft, brown - but the intensity is familiar. “he dies. right in front of you. in your arms, maybe. and he’s dead and for him it’s over and it doesn’t matter anymore, but you’re still alive and it fucking _hurts_. every breath is clogged with mustard gas and every movement is a bullet lodged in your body.” he shifts, picking at the edge of a scab on the back of his hand. “i think it must be as close to dying as you can get while still being completely and wholly alive.” 

pete’s tongue curls. “what a waste of death,” he croaks.

gerard considers pete for a minute. his pale face appears almost skeletal under the bathroom light. pete’s snivelling sounds conspicuous in the silence. 

after a long moment gerard hauls himself back to his feet and grips pete’s arm tightly. “c’mon.” his voice is quiet. solemn. a church voice. “people are going to be waking up soon.” he leads pete back to his bunk and even tucks him in before climbing into his own bed, like pete’s a child who’s had a nightmare.

lying there in the dark, staring at the bottom of the mattress above him, pete starts to pray and realises with a jolt that he doesn’t believe in god anymore (despite this, he still clings to the promise of an afterlife; whether heaven or hell or anywhere else, if mikey is waiting for him somewhere pete intends to make it there soon).

-

through the hedgerows lies operation cobra (saporta goes fucking nuts. pete forgets long enough to ask patrick if he’s seen mikey around, because he _needs_ to see this. pete’s heart drops into his boots at the helpless way pat stares at him in response), marigny, the drive across france, the siege of aachen. pete loses count of all the times he presses his back against slim cover and comes to terms with death. time and time again he manages to cheat it like a dirty card game (he wants to flip the table on the crooked bastard dealer who keeps stacking his hand). gerard sings sometimes, on the field: snatches of verses about halos of bullets and patron saints float above the chaos. every now and then when pete recognises a tune he’s familiar with he belts along as best he can with his heart hammering high in his throat and his gun rattling against his ribcage. when he’s allowed to sleep he lays with his hands across his chest and wonders if any of the germans he’d shot had been at omaha beach. common sense tells him that life never works out that way. 

he fights as though he’s got nothing left to live for. he knows that it’s not true: mother, father, sister, brother, patrick. all around him people with girlfriends and wives and families drop dead and yet by some cruel irony pete repeatedly comes out intact (visibly intact, anyways. a marionette puppet that moves its arms and legs but not its head). whatever used to be behind his solar plexus rots into something resembling the bottom of a foxhole: soft, cold, and half-liquid.

-

at remagen, pete gets caught in the blast of a grenade. in the heartbeat before he blacks out, still pinwheeling through the air, he thinks it has finally happened. he was finally just a touch too slow, and he’s going to wake up in heaven or hell next to the biggest brown eyes he has ever seen. but then again, pete’s never been that lucky.

it’s a freak thing. ask anyone: toro, patrick, iero, gerard, any and all of the medstaff. he’s taken worse hits and walked away absolutely peachy, gotten off virtually unscathed in the face of more direct blasts. all this one should’ve done is rattle his cage a little bit; discombobulated him, maybe some mild temporary hearing loss and a few minor cuts and bruises, nothing that would’ve warranted keeping him out of combat even for just a day or two. pete seesaws between total narcissism and supreme self-loathing on a regular schedule but even he knows that he’s a good soldier, good enough that his commanding officers wouldn’t let the field hospital hold him for less than a broken bone (and not even one of the little broken bones. pete’s pretty sure they would’ve made him go into the field with a shattered wrist if he was ambidextrous enough to shoot the broadside of a barn with his other hand).

it’s a freak thing.

both of toro’s hands appear on pete’s back, just above the source of the pain radiating up his spine. “fuck,” pete mumbles into the dirt. “fuck. fuck fuck fuck fucking cocksucking fuck.” he lifts his head so toro can hear him over the gunfire whistling overhead. “my legs are gone. toro, my legs are gone.”

to his credit, the medic only sounds mildly annoyed when he replies. “shut up, wentz, you goddamn idiot, your legs are fine.”

pete twists, craning his head in an attempt to get a look over his shoulder. “i can’t feel them, i can’t fucking feel my goddamn fucking cocksucking legs, toro, they’re gone, my legs are gone.”

one of toro’s big palms shoves pete’s face back into the dirt. “stay still,” he orders in a grim voice. he mutters “shit” under his breath.

“shit,” pete agrees. he slaps the ground with as much force as he can muster. “shit,” he repeats, not so much from the pain as from anger. he’s going to be taken out of combat for sure. they’ll send him back to illinois. he’ll never see action again and instead of giving his poor mother the tragic dignity of a martyred son, she’ll have to bear the shame of a weak ex-soldier found dangling from an ugly necktie. 

a soldier’s last thoughts should be of home. pete yanks on the slack cord in his heart labelled ‘way comma michael’ with all his remaining strength. _mikey_ , he screams into the empty gap. _mikey. wait for me._

-

above the ugly scar on his back, pete is fine, a ‘prime physical specimen of a young adult male’. below it, pete is something the surgeon calls ‘paraplegic’ instead of just ‘crippled’. rehab gives pete a lot of time to sit quietly and appreciate the irony of his half-and-half body catching up to his half-and-half heart and his half-and-half head. he doesn’t get any visitors because he’s in fucking england and anyone who cares about him is dead, dying, or on the other side of the atlantic ocean. he sits, takes his medicine, pretends to eat what the nurses leave him. at night he lies awake and pinches his dead legs under the covers. the edges of his chest ache around the void space where he used to love mikey.

when the war ends, ray toro of all people - god bless him - finds pete, somehow, someway. when he walks through the door of pete’s hospital ward in a reversal of the prodigal son’s return, pete gets up to hug him and falls to the floor in a tangle of bedclothes and useless legs. ray finds him there, too. “france,” he tells pete quietly. “they’re all waiting in france.”

“sounds like we ought to go to france.”

they make a stupid pair - a big curly-haired man with new scars twisting the skin at the edges of his eyepatch pushing a loud-mouthed, short, moody guy in a wheelchair - but folks smile at them anyways, sad smiles filled with pity. pete tries not to see them. _they don’t know they don’t know they don’t know_ he chants. _i did this so that they wouldn’t know._ it is difficult for him to savor their ignorance knowing what it has cost him (more than just his legs. he sometimes wishes he could wear one of the black armbands that he’s seen on so many wives and girlfriends and mothers, put a star up in his kitchen window or paint WAR WIDOW on the back of his chair in red).

when they get to france, gerard and iero meet them at the station. gerard pushes pete a yard or so behind ray and iero, who are catching up in earnest. he sighs. “we’ve been worried about you, wentz.”

pete can’t imagine why. “you needn’t have bothered,” he snorts. “apparently it’s nigh on impossible for me to die.”

“in any case,” gerard persists. “it’s good to have you back.”

patrick awaits them back at the tent city where the troops waiting to be repatriated are living in the interim. as soon as he catches sight of pete, he rushes forward, drops into a kneel, and catches one of pete’s hands between both of his own. “pete,” he says. “pete. fuck, the war is over, pete.” it’s old news but the wonder is still fresh in his tone.

“yeah, pat. it’s over.” pete squeezes patrick’s wrist. “we’re safe now.”

**Author's Note:**

> i wrote this for my friend for his birthday so happy birthday <3 you're so important to me and i'm really honored to be able to call myself your friend. thanks for always being so patient and letting me yell at you about petekey. you'll always be the patrick to my pete.
> 
> a big BIG thank u to irene for the beta. follow them @ dadtoro.tumblr.com, they're the sunshine of my life. any remaining grammar mistakes are either intentional or a result of my own oversight. you decide which haha
> 
> if you've finished this and want to yell with me about it, hmu at wintour.tumblr.com. thanks so much for reading <3


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